Created attachment 696541 [details]
Screen capture of kmix input channels.  There's no "Front Mic" input channel

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my HP Z400 from OpenSUSE 13.2 to OpenSUSE
42.1.  42.1 is able to play audio, but audio recording has been a
challenge.  I've gone through the suggestions in
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Intel-HDA_sound_problems, but haven't been
able to resolve my issues.

I'm using ALSA for audio; I'm not using pulseaudio.

First, here's the modprobe configuration for my sound card

---------------------------------
0 sunny:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
# u1Nb.vdT+vcEzNl9:82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
---------------------------------

And here's the list of analog devices, according to arecord:

---------------------------------
1 sunny:~$ arecord --list-devices
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC262 Analog [ALC262 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 2: ALC262 Alt Analog [ALC262 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 2/2
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
---------------------------------

Audio recording works with applications that can address alsa devices
directly.  For example,

  arecord -f cd --device hw:1,0 --vumeter=stereo sound.wav

will record audio.  I can also record via audacity.

With other applications, things get problematic.  For example,
fig1.png is kmix's view of analog input channels and fig2.png is the
list of available input channels.

Notice that kmix shows a channel for Front Mic Boost, but no channel
for Front Mic.  Which means it's not possible to adjust microphone
levels with kmix.

Fortunately, alsamixer has a Front Mic channel (in addition to Front
Mic Boost), and I can adjust the levels there.

I'll call this a regression: in 13.2, kmix's input channels included
front mic, but 42.1 doesn't provide that option.  You have to use
alsamixer.

The other problem involves Jitsi web (I'm using firefox 48.0.1, as
distributed with OpenSUSE).  https://meet.mayfirst.org/ is a Jitsi web
installation I often use.  In opensuse 13.2 firefox/jitsi would give
me the option of using an analog microphone input to capture audio.
In 42.1, firefox/jitsi says "There was an error connecting to your
microphone: Requested microphone was not found".

Finally, I'm going to include a pair of screen captures from Configure
Desktop > Multimedia > Audio and video.

fig3.png shows the "Default Audio Playback Device Preference".
There's one audio device called "default".  In 13.2, there were two
devices: ALC262 and ALC262 Alt (corresponding to arecords device
list).

fig4.png shows the "Default Audio Recording Device Preference".
Observe there are no devices listed.  By contract, in 13.2, I'd see
at least the list of devices shown by arecord.

To summarize, low-level command line tools (arecord, amixer) and
audacity, are able to record audio from analog inputs.  However, these
same analog inputs are unavailable to other applications (system
settings, kmix, web jitsi on firefox).  I'm opening this as a
regression because of differences in 13.2 vs 42.1, where there appears
to be a loss of functionality in 42.1.

Again, I've had no issues with audio playback.

A bit of system information:

---------------------------------
0 sunny:~$ uname -a
Linux sunny 4.1.27-27-default #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 15 12:46:41 UTC 2016
(84ae57e) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

0 sunny:~$ cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="openSUSE Leap"
VERSION="42.1"
VERSION_ID="42.1"
PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE Leap 42.1 (x86_64)"
ID=opensuse
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:opensuse:opensuse:42.1"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.opensuse.org"
HOME_URL="https://opensuse.org/"
ID_LIKE="suse"

0 sunny:~$ kdeinit5 --version
Qt: 5.5.1
KDE: 5.21.0
---------------------------------